Abstract

As society is getting industrialized and globalized, competitive endeavor for survival has been rising and being a threat to mental health toward people living in modern society. Perceived stress of life events may be a contributing factor to mental illness as well as physical illness. The purpose of our study is to identify the level of perceived stress of recent life events and to determine its gender-specific correlates among 933 residents in Ansan city. The Korean version of the Global Assessment of Recent Stress (GARS) was administrated to assess the perceived of recent stress. As physical, psychological and socioeconomical variables, age, sex, marital status, education, job, religion, household income per month, the presence of family members having mental illness, and the number of cohabitants were collected as candidate correlates of total GARS scores. About one third of the residents (32%) showed the moderate or severe levels of total GARS scores and the highest levels of perceived stress in financial pressure among eight domains of GARS. Divorced/separated/widowed status was a significant and independent correlate for men, whereas both monthly household income and the presence of family members having mental illness were significant and independent correlates for women. Therefore, when planning a community-based program, identifying target groups vulnerable to stress and creating gender-specific strategies for promoting mental and physical health are needed. (Korean J Str Res 2009;17:91∼98)

• Keywords: Community, Life events, Stress, Mental health;